


The Fox, the Monk and the Mikado of All Night's Dreaming

by seraphim_grace



Category: Gundam Wing/AC
Genre: Fantasy, M/M, Romance, fairy tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-09
Updated: 2010-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-11 00:40:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/seraphim_grace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Relena tells a boy an old fairytale</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was heavily inspired by "The Dream hunters" by Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano but it is much longer and doesn't quite follow the same story.

[](http://s11.photobucket.com/user/seraphim_grace/media/Mask_of_a_Fox_by_keiran121_zps3ea2d2df.jpg.html)  
original art for this story by [Keire_ke](http://keiran121.deviantart.com/art/Mask-of-a-Fox-35542284)

_The boy watches the old woman with an uneasy hunger. She comes here every day and sits with her great big black bag in the gazebo. He doesn't say anything, but he notices everything about her. She wears a wide brimmed black hat over her grey braid. She unpins it as she sits down in the white gazebo, the pin goes back into the hat and she lays it on the bench beside her. She comes here everyday. _

_She wears black linen, pin tucked over her bosom, a cameo at her throat, and black lace gloves. She is old but the children gather around her. In her vast bag she has bags of sweets and a flask of something that she never shares with the children. Sometimes she has cookies, always in plastic wrappers._

_The children gather around her on the wooden floor and she sits with them for hours, talking and they listen animatedly._

_He doesn't understand._

_Nevertheless he hungers._

_It is raining. Thick sheeting rain that obscures everything but he stands beside the tree and watches the gazebo. There are no children today. Still she comes, her black umbrella held above her head, she enters the gazebo with a fond smile to herself and settles herself in the usual spot, shaking out the umbrella before she removes the pin from her hat, then the hat to lay it down on the bench. She opens her bag and from it pulls the thermos flask and a box of cookies._

_She looks up at him with old blue eyes, "are you coming in or not?" She asks with a smile._

_He stops for a moment working out the weight of her words, testing them. Then he acquiesces, walking forward through the rain to where she sits. She says nothing, just offers him a cup from the thermos and a cookie. "I've seen you," she says, "among the trees, why didn't you join the other children?"_

_He says nothing, refusing both gifts, he just sits dripping on the wood. She offers him a cloth handkerchief to dry away some of the water. He snatches it greedily, wiping down his face. "It's not poisoned, you know," she says pouring herself a cup of the liquid and sipping it, "and it's very rude to accept a drink and then glare at it."_

_He cautiously tastes the cup and takes a large swallow. It is comfortably hot, thick and creamy, sweet and powdery all at once. It is not unpleasant. He drinks it greedily; worried that she will take it away again. _

_She surprises him instead. "Would you like some more? I have plenty." He says nothing, just thrusts out the cup. "You know," she says pouring out the cocoa, "The cookies are good too." He breaks a bit off, eyeing her warily. The cookie is soft and still warm, it is chewy and there are soft warm chunks in it that taste almost like the drink._

_She smiles almost indulgently. This close he can see she is an old woman, much older than he thought her, she has taken two long needles and a ball of wool from her bag and is manipulating them in a way he doesn't understand. He has seen her do this before and doesn't worry, not this time._

"_Why?" he asks._

_She smiles again, tilting her head in a girlish gesture that she is too old for by at least fifty years, her hair is a long braid that sits over her shoulder. "You remind me of someone." She says fondly, it looks like she might want to reach out to touch him and he jerks back but she doesn't move at all. "Do you know why the children gather here?" She asks._

_He shakes his head. _

"_Because of the stories," she says, "I thought it was that I gave them candies, but they come for the stories," she is looking off into the middle distance, smiling a rather pretty enigmatic smile to herself, "would you like a story?" she asks._

_He is baffled, this woman's kindness seems a trap to him, but he wants more information, if he listens to the story then perhaps, just perhaps, he might understand. _

_He nods._

"_Long before the colonies," she begins, adjusting her knitting and looking at him clearly for a moment, "on Earth there was a country called Japan and the people of Japan believed that it was created when a god forged a bright and shining sword and five perfect drops fell from the sword and formed the islands._

In the prefecture of Hokkaido was a family of poor merchants called the Yuy family. It was not large but the three children were well beloved of their father, but with a fourth child on the way he worried how his family would survive the long winter. Timer were hard and the crops had been bad and every night as he looked at the earnest eyes of his children, and rubbed his hands over his wife's swollen belly he prayed to whichever god he thought would listen that there would be a solution.

Yet everyday he would rise and open his small shop which sold wares the town, needed like chalk and string and wax, but no one came.

He kept the store tidy, and his oldest son helped- but still no one came.

He prayed each night to all the gods he knew- but still no one came.

His wife made the portions smaller and smaller, only eating herself because of the baby within her, but still he knew the food wouldn't last and he could hear the cries of his children in the night with their empty stomachs. They tried to be quiet but he could hear them in the still of the night.

He offered blood to the dark gods in the hope that things would change.

But still no one came.

The eldest son was eleven and he approached his father about leaving, saying that he might be able to find his fortune and return. Although his wife wept she allowed the boy to go knowing that the food would last that much longer with one less mouth to feed. She gave him a small portion of millet and some sake, she embraced him tightly and together they watched their son go to find his fortune.

The father added prayers to his son to those that he made so diligently but still no one came.

After a week had passed word reached the family that bandits on the road had killed the boy.

Their eldest daughter was a girl of seven and she approached her father and explained that if they made an offering to the temple then maybe their destiny would change. The local temple was a week's walk away so they gave the child what they could spare, a small portion of food and a several candles to use as an offering for the Buddha. It was with a heavy heart that they watched her go.

But still no one came.

They could no longer afford firewood and the youngest son went into the nearby woods to gather wood, and one day, like his brother and his sister he never returned.

But still no one came.

Then one night, when the snow had begun to fall an old man with a hook for a hand and a heavy limp came to their shop. He was old and stank of sulphur but it was late and the snow thick on the ground so they accepted his offer of money for lodging. He noticed the empty air of the house and the abandoned toys and listened to Mama Yuy as she told him about her family. She told him about her oldest child, a boy, who had gone to make his fortune and been murdered. She told him about her only daughter who had gone to the temple to make an offering and never returned. She told him about her baby who had gone into the forest to be taken by goblins. Because he listened she told him all about how the crops had been bad and that her husband had never lost faith. And through it all he eyed her belly hungrily.

When asked he said he was a traveller but that he knew some magic and if they would share their food with him he would do his best to bring their children back to them as a gift for their kindness.

They did not know then that such gifts come at a much higher price than the one he quoted.

As Mama Yuy cooked the little rice they had for their guest, she warmed what remained of their beer and only ate herself because of the baby inside her. Her husband did not eat and ignored the terrible pangs of hunger that wracked him.

Mama Yuy may have been desperate with worry over her children but she refused his magic and instead begged a story.

So the old man told her a tale.

_An old man named Takahama lived in a little house behind the cemetery of the temple of Sozanji. He was extremely amiable and generally liked by his neighbors, though most of them considered him to be a little mad. His madness, it would appear, entirely rested upon the fact that he had never married or even evinced the desire for intimate companionship with women. _

_One summer day he became very ill, so ill, in fact, that he sent for his sister-in-law and her son. They both came and did all they could to bring comfort during his last hours. While they watched, Takahama fell asleep; but he had no sooner done so than a large white butterfly flew into the room and rested on the old man's pillow. The young man tried to drive it away with a fan; but it came back three times, as if loath to leave the sufferer. _

_At last Takahama's nephew chased it out into the garden, through the gate, and into the cemetery beyond, where it lingered over a woman's tomb, and then mysteriously disappeared. On examining the tomb the young man found the name "Akiko" written upon it, together with a description narrating how Akiko died when she was eighteen. Though the tomb was covered with moss and must have been erected fifty years previously, the boy saw that it was surrounded with flowers, and that the little water tank had been recently filled. _

_When the young man returned to the house he found that Takahama had passed away, and he returned to his mother and told her what he had seen in the cemetery. _

_"Akiko?" murmured his mother. "When your uncle was young he was betrothed to Akiko. She died of consumption shortly before her wedding day. When Akiko left this world your uncle resolved never to marry, and to live ever near her grave. For all these years he has remained faithful to his vow, and kept in his heart all the sweet memories of his one and only love. Every day Takahama went to the cemetery, whether the air was fragrant with summer breeze or thick with falling snow. Every day he went to her grave and prayed for her happiness, swept the tomb and set flowers there. When Takahama was dying, and he could no longer perform his loving task, Akiko came for him. That white butterfly was her sweet and loving soul." _

Mama Yuy was moved by the story and thanked him for the thoughtful gift and promised when her baby was born that they would grow to know the tale. The traveler smiled a mysterious smile and left at dawn.

After that Mama Yuy was tormented by terrible dreams. She saw the traveler as a terrible sorcerer using foul dark magicks on her baby, and sacrificing him to further his own life so when the traveler returned with the waxing of the moon when she made him soup she was nervous and spilled it on his lap. Though her husband apologized Mama Yuy was troubled. She excused herself and stepped out into the snow.

She started to walk and she did not stop. She walked and she walked until the pains of labor twisted her belly. She carried on walking until she came to a small temple tended by an old monk who brought her inside.

That night with the moon full she bore her son and told the old monk, a huge man of muscles and a drooping mustache, of her fears about the traveler, of how he was a sorcerer and he would use her baby to promote his own power. She told him how she thought he had maybe murdered her other children. She told him she feared that he had caused the crops to fail so that he might take the opportunity to steal her baby.

The old monk accepted her fear and when she died soon after, of exhaustion and hunger, he took the child for his own, remembering the tales that he promised to tell the child and he called him Heero, meaning first son.

But the monk was old and with the baby on his back he began to travel to a large monastery where the baby could grow up. He walked for days; eating only the food the locals gave him and fed the baby from a goat that he had purchased.

That was a terrible winter and one night the old monk came across a small campfire in an out of the way copse in the woods. There was a fair man at the fire and the monk knew he had reached his last. So he told the man the story of the woman and the sorcerer who coveted her child, he told him of the monastery where he was taking him and entrusted the child to the man because there was no one else. Then the next morning as the Ronin departed with the baby in the fold of his kimono and the goat on a string trailing behind the old monk lay down beside the last of the fire to die in the snow.

Although the Ronin had promised to take the child to the monastery he had many things to do on the way. He found that by carrying a baby and leading a goat, a cranky animal at best, that he was above suspicion for those things he had done. For the Ronin was an assassin slowly murdering his way through those who had murdered his lord. He called the boy Kid or Boy but had impressed on him three things, to never leave a living enemy behind him, to trust no one and that his name was Heero Yuy.

One day they came across a small village where there was a shop tended by an old man and a boy. They did not have much but they offered the Ronin and the boy with him shelter for the night and the old man in exchange for a few coins. The old man told how his wife, driven mad with pregnancy, had run off and left him and the son he had thought killed by bandits had returned but that he did his best. His kindness amazed the Ronin who accepted his kindness with trepidation but did not let the boy out of his sight for the length of his stay. When the time came to leave the old man smiled at the boy and from a chest took a stuffed fox fur toy which he gave to the child because he would have had a son the same age if not for the cruel winter as it had come to be known. The Ronin accepted the kindness but took the boy away quickly. It was only later he realized that the man's name was Yuy.

The boy was sullen and quiet but listened to whatever people told him and remembered it, even so he was nearly seven years old when Odin, wounded in his quest took him to the monastery that the old monk had pledged him to and told him the story of his birth, of the sorcerer his mother believed chased him and the value of his own name.

He sat with the Ronin on his deathbed and when the monks came to cover his face he simply took the fox toy that a strange old man had given him and followed the monks.

_The old woman adjusts her knitting, finishing off the row and wrapping the loose wool about the ball before slipping it onto the two needles. She fishes out the last of the cookies and took one herself before handing one to the boy._

"_Is that how it ends?" The boy asks._

"_It is a long story," she says, "come tomorrow and I will tell you about a fox who met the boy become a man." She smiles, he stands up and offers her the handkerchief back. "Here," she says offering him the umbrella as she looks at the driving rain. "I have another," she roots around in the bag, "in here somewhere." He takes the umbrella warily. "I'll be here tomorrow," she says, "and," she eyes the sky, "it will probably still be raining."_

_He doesn't thank her but goes to the doorway, opening the sleek black umbrella and walks off into the rain. She sighs as she takes out the second one and knows that he will return tomorrow and wonders if he'd like tuna in the sandwiches she will make him._


	2. Chapter 2

_He watches her through the rain for at least an hour before he joins her in the gazebo. None of the other children that crowd around her have braved the heavy rain. She smiles when she sees him. She is knitting, her thermos of cocoa open beside her. It is clear that she was waiting for him to join her. "I suppose you want to hear the next part of the story," she says softly, smiling at him._

_He sits down cross legged as she adjusts her knitting. "It's a very long story," she tells him, as he pushes back his hair behind his ear, "I doubt that we'll finish it today." He nods, looking, for the first time since she has seen him, his age. He is wearing a stained and oversized tee shirt and there are paint spatters on his jeans._

"_I brought food," she said, "just some sandwiches and some bottles of soda."_

_He is quiet for a while, and then offers her a smile through broken teeth, "I'd just like the next part of the story."_

_She is old which allows her luxuries that she might not have any other way. She gets away with things that she would have allowed only an old lady herself. "You remind me of someone I know," she says, her needles clacking, "and he told me this story."_

"_I want to know about the boy," the boy insists, "I want to know what happened next." _

_He is demanding as youth often is, without understanding that he has all the time in the world to know this story, to know how this story was learned, of the whims of an old woman who tells it. She smiles at him fondly because he was exactly the same, and in some ways he still is._

"_This part of the story," she says, "isn't about the boy raised by monks, but instead about a fox."_

In the lands of the clan of Oda there was a young lord with an eye for a pretty women and a heart that was made of stone. He was handsome and proud. He wore the best clothes his family, who were very wealthy, could afford, and he was known throughout the kingdom as a rogue and a lover of women. Women considered him to be a great prize and vied for the attention of such a man.

When they were truly cunning they would lie on the wooden pathways around their palaces and let the moon fall on their bellies in order that they conceive a child knowing that his family were wealthy and would keep her in great luxury, they would move her to the Oda estate.

Now at that time in Japan there were great witches and wizards, and demons walked through the great forests, before they were cut away to grow rice. There were monsters and wicked shadows, goblins and lost children that cried on the wind. Word of the prince's desirous ways, of the women he used and then left reached a fox.

The foxes of Japan were cunning and quick, and tied to the magic of the forest and the land. They belonged to the moon and the stars, and they could be anything they wanted to be because they were magic and beauty and cunning and quick. This fox came to the lands of the clan of Oda and spied the prince. She saw his beauty and his pride and how he would be unable to resist her.

She took human form and wearing her pride and her hair and knocked on the gates. The servants saw her amazing beauty and thought of their prince, who was away, and they dressed her in the finest robes and dressed her hair. They painted her nails and rouged her lips. They layered the finest incenses about her and treated her like a princess.

When the prince came she was the perfect silent princess of which he had always dreamed. She did not lie naked under the moon. She made no move towards his wealth and refused all gifts the that he offered her. She would not tell him her name and refused all of his wooings, for such had been her plan. She had meant to ignore him, to drive him mad with love for her and to leave him.

He brought artists from Edo to capture her beauty.

She smiled and told him that she had no interest in him.

He paid courtiers to write haiku and waka to serenade her every breath.

She remained aloof.

He woke her up to tell her the words with which he had wooed other women.

She sent him away.

But his eyes were like lavenders and his hair was the colour of finely burnished wood, and sometimes, despite herself she found her own golden eyes drawn to him when he wasn't looking.

Sometimes she smiled behind the ivory fans they gave her at things he said. Despite herself, and her intentions to shame him, she found herself lingering on the curve of his cheek.

He proposed and she refused him.

He proposed and she refused him again.

He proposed marriage a third time and she refused him a third time.

Then he woke her in the night to show her the stars in the sky, stars that were linked to her being, and he gave her the human names for the constellations, and she sat on a rock, in a garden that he had built for her and she wondered if it would be so bad, then steeled herself against him.

He proposed marriage a fourth time, a fifth, and she refused him.

The more determined he was the more she denied him.

The one night, when the moon was full and the stars were bright she sloughed off the robes of many colours that they had given her, and undid her hair and her human form and ran through the forest to remind herself that human men were merely trinkets to be played with and that bad things came to those who forgot that. She hunted, chasing a rabbit into the bushes, ripping out its throat and glorying in her fox form.

She returned come dawn, her belly heavy with blood and meat. And took her human form and put on the robes of many colours and drank heavily of his liquor and when he came to her she was slovenly and drunk and denied his suit, but removed her robe and lay with him.

They were married the next spring.

She had a pup in human form, a child with her large golden eyes but his father's hands and because he had another wife, she was given free rein in how to raise the child so she gave him a name in the fox fashion. She had a single pup in that litter so she called him Solo and he was best beloved of her heart.

She gave him every pleasure of both his human form and his fox form. Although most women gave their babies to women of the household to nurse she nursed him herself. And her son was as beloved of his mother and his father and denied nothing.

By the time he was three years old she came again to child.

This infant was a chubby creature of burnished oak hair and his father's lavender eyes, but his smile was cheeky and he demanded like a fox. As he was her second son she called him Duo.

If Solo was the apple of his mother's eye then Duo was the jewel of his father's. He went everywhere with his father and was shown to passing lords with the greatest pride. He was denied nothing. He had both a father and a mother that loved him, and a brother that adored him. He was happy.

Then one day plague came to the Oda lands. It was quick and ruthless and left the servants and the lords equal in the mud, with large buboes on their bodies. Their eyes were eaten out of their heads and their hair fell away in hanks. Fearful for his wives and children, which at that time numbered six, the prince sent them away in a golden carriage, making sure that they were outside the clan lands before the emperor closed them.

One day on the road one of the other children began to cough. By nightfall the child was dead in a stream of thin white vomit.

The next morning his mother and two of his siblings was dead.

The fox did what any mother would do; she took her babies and ran.

Within a week she began to sweat, her eyes felt dry and water burned her throat. What food she caught she gave to her sons, Solo, who was golden and Duo who looked like his father who by now was dead.

She was dead by week's end, having spent so long in human form that their plague destroyed her. Solo sat by her deathbed, a young boy, and promised to look after his brother.

The two fox cubs were known amongst the foxes of Japan, because they were cunning and quick. They were not good hunters but they were fine thieves and the youngest of them was known for his beauty. They were children and the other foxes were indulgent of them as long as they passed through.

A human plague killed Solo, he had gone to the town to steal food but he came back with fabric and a small jade dragon that he claimed had belonged to their father. Unsure what else to do Duo took on his fox form and ran, but even though he was not old enough to be on his own the other foxes drove him from their lands because they feared the wrath of his mother who was known. They feared him because he had the colouring of his human father and he was not one of them.

He ran and ran and ran.

He eventually came across an old nun who lived alone in a ruined temple in the woods. She was blind and was amazed at the naked young boy, starved and ragged on the broken steps. She could not see his hair which was the colour of foxes and his eyes which was the colour of twilight and she picked him up. She carried him into the temple and she cared for him, she taught him human language and never tried to take from him the little jade dragon that he sometimes clutched and sometimes suckled on.

As a fox he would hunt the forest where her temple lay, and as a human he played her games. She taught him to read and to write and called him her little gift from the gods. He knew his own name and nothing else when she found him but in her care he became a child. She dressed him in her own clothes, bound tight about his much smaller frame. He bundled him into her bed when she slept, and though she didn't have much she shared it with him.

When they brought gifts to the temple she took his tiny hand in hers and took the long walk to the town nearest her, though it took the best part of a day. When he tired she picked him up singing songs to him as they walked. No one questioned where she had gotten the boy with the bright eyes and the long, long hair, for he would have no one cut it, remembering when he slept the feel of his brother curled up beside him, clutching handfuls of it in his sleep.

Summers and winters passed with the old nun, singing her songs and cleaning her broken temple. She wound cord to tie the jade dragon about his throat, she taught him many things, the soft arts to wash his hair, how to powder his skin, for she suspected that the only life he might have was with a brothel, where he could be beloved. There was a brothel to the west where the emperor himself was known to visit. She hoped for that for her boy for she had no treasure, she had no wealth, or land that she might buy him a bride. She loved him well, but she was practical. She had been a princess and she knew those arts.

She took him to the town where the eyes of both men and women watched him as he walked through the dirt streets. He was strong and brave and carried her bags on his shoulders and they walked hand in hand back to the temple singing her happy songs.

There were bandits on the way. She heard the rustling in the trees and sent him on ahead, "but Nana," he called her, "how will you find your way?"

"I am old," she said, "and sometimes I need to stop on the way, surely you know that, my little angel, go ahead and I shall be back for nightfall."

He waited and he waited and she never came.

He waited till nightfall and she never came.

He waited till morning and she never came.

He waited for a week, tending the paths and temple as she had taught him, singing her songs and waiting for her, but she never came.

When the villagers came to take the stone from the temple for their houses they were surprised to find the boy there for they thought that like the old nun that he had been murdered. They took him back to the town, for he was still too young to be on his own, being just past his tenth birthday but he was strong and could be made to work in the fields, and fair so he could be sold to a brothel for a large amount because not a man in the village had not looked lingeringly on the boy's thighs.

Sitting in the house of a family who could scarce afford another mouth to feed in their house he heard them speak of him, they called him names, a foundling, a goblin, a demon and not the angel his Nana had called him. They heard just how much they could get to sell him to the local brothel, but it was not a nice place for he had helped Nana many times give the rites of the dead on the whores as they died for they had never given them the proper care.

That night as the moon was full he placed the jade dragon on its cord in his mouth, as he had when he was much smaller and took his fox form. He ran. He ran for as long as his fox legs would carry him and promised he would never again go to the places where the men lived, or the foxes had their dens – that he would travel to the very centre of Japan where the gods still lived and he would find a home there, where he could be alone.

After many weeks travel, through the trees and the mountains until he found a small waterfall that fell into a small pool that sang sweetly in the mornings, and the ferns smelt rich. There was a tanuki in the area but he did not care for the adolescent fox in his territory except that sometimes they talked. He found himself a small den under a large rock beside the waterfall and filled it with moss and dried ferns, burying the jade dragon under a small pile of pebbles so that it would be safe. He took the scraps of fabric that still held Nana's scent and the hairs he had from his brother and as he lay in the moss and the ferns in his fox form he would remember his mother, and her soft scent that was almost the same as Nana and almost the same as Solo and he carried their love with him and knew he would need no one else ever.

"_Is that the end of the story?" the boy asks, biting into the tuna sandwich she had given him. It had sat in its foil before him until she had almost finished._

_She throws her braid over her shoulder, "no, tomorrow if it's still raining I'll tell you the story of how the fox and the monk met, of a challenge between the tanuki and the fox."_

_He chews thoughtfully, then washes it down with the cocoa before he speaks. "It'll rain all week." She wraps the dark blue wool around her needles before stabbing it through the ball and placing them in her giant black bag. "Will you be here tomorrow?"_

"_I'll be here." She looks out the doorway of the veranda, "it's not going to stop any time soon, I can get my driver to give you a lift, if you like."_

_His face hardens for a moment, "I don't live that far away." He says crisply. "I'll be fine, but thank you."_

_As she watches him she makes a decision. Her driver comes down the path, his black suit under the black umbrella, and he bows his head when he sees her, "My lady," he says. She smiles with a smile she would have despaired of herself as a girl for its sweetness before looping her arm through his. She enjoys the luxuries she gives herself as an old woman that she never could have taken even ten years before. "Is that the boy to whom you tell the story? He reminds me of Master Heero, Lady Relena, is that perchance why you take such an interest?"_

_She smiles, leaning on the muscles of his arm, "Danny, if Heero and Duo had ever had a child, I think that boy would be it. Tomorrow, arrange for someone to follow him, to make sure he gets home safe."_


	3. Chapter 3

_She is knitting the sleeve of the sweater when the boy steps into the gazebo where she is sitting. Because of the rain he is still the only child that has gathered to hear her story. There is a cold snap in the air as winter starts to creep through the summer. She has pulled a thin wool cardigan over her black blouse. She has traded her sandals for lace up boots. Her wide brimmed hat has been replaced with a felt beret._

_The boy still wears a thin tee and the same paint splattered jeans. He has no socks between the frayed edge of his jeans and the stained rim of his sneakers._

_Yet his face is freshly washed, and his hair neatly swept back._

_She is starting to clearly worry about him. She shows none of it on her face, rooting around in her bag for her thermos. "Do you know," she says with a smile as he sit down in front of her, he always sits on the floor with his legs crossed, "when I was your age I swore I would never have a bag as big as my mother's, she could go on holiday for months with it, and she had everything she needed. Then over the years I noticed how my little clutch purse wasn't big enough, and then I found that bag sitting in the cupboard and couldn't help but notice just how useful it was to have a bag big enough for my knitting and my book, and my thermos and sandwiches and a spare jumper and a packet of handkerchiefs." He seems fond of her as she talks aimlessly about the large black bag she carries with her everywhere. But he says nothing, he is here for the story, anything else is a bonus to him._

"But you're not here to listen to me continue on about being an old woman, old women are by their nature garrulous," she offers him a mischievous smile. It is a smile she never would have given at his age. "you're here to listen to the story about the fox and the monk."

"_It is a strange story," the boy says quietly, "I haven't heard anything like it."_

"_It's an old story," she corrects him, "and doesn't feature a princess in a tower, when Wufei told me it I was surprised, but he was right, it is more beautiful for being so different." She looks distant for a moment, "but I was telling you about how the fox and the monk met."_

By the mountain with the thin waterfall where the fox made his home there was a small temple. It was run down and abandoned, but one day a young monk with messy brown hair and bright blue eyes moved in. It was far from the land of men so his appearance was a matter of some discussion.

Every day the young fox and the tanuki gathered to watch the monk as he cut down the trees to form planks to mend the roof. They watched as he hoed the back quarter to plant yams, onions and leeks. They watched as he flooded some of his land to grow rice. They watched as he dug up large rocks to mend the holes in his foundations.

Over the weeks they watched as he turned the derelict frame of the temple into a small and beautiful building. They watched as he used the left over wood to make simple furniture and carve images of the Buddha.

The fox watched as he dug out the stream so that it ran closer to his temple, and he watched closely as the brown haired monk bathed in the water.

They watched as he carved his own bell, with heavy wood and ropes twisted from fibres from the bark of the trees he cut down.

They watched as he wasted nothing until the temple was completed.

"Do you know," said the tanuki, "that is a fine looking building," he looked at the small temple that was far from the lands of man, and then the fox with the burnished oak coat and eyes the colour of twilight, "I think it would make a fine set for a tanuki, it has carpets and rugs, it has carvings and a great fire place. I can imagine that I would be happy there, I could gather myself a fair wife and have many litters of strong tanuki in such a place."

The fox scoffed at him, for such was the fox's way. "It would make a lousy set," he said, "see how the steps are carved in such a way, you are too old and fat to do anything but live under the foundations, it is designed, I think, with a fox in mind. Yes," said the fox, "it would make a lousy set but it would make a fine den. I am too young to consider taking a mate, but in time it would make a fine place to raise one's litters."

The tanuki laughed out loud, "You are too small and thin for such a building," he said, "and I do not think you would be capable of driving away the monk so as to claim it as your own."

The fox never could resist a challenge. "Your magic is as old and addled as you yourself," he told the tanuki, "I doubt that you would be cunning enough to drive him away, for none are as cunning and quick as the foxes."

"Shall we make it a challenge then?" asked the old tanuki, "we shall both try to use our magicks to drive the monk away, and who ever succeeds shall take the temple as their set, but the other shall leave these lands so that our children shall be able to take lands as their own without contest."

"Done," said the fox quite sure that he would win such a challenge. "But to seal the deal neither shall sabotage the other's attempts, to make it fair, on the nights when you try to drive him away I will stay in my den beside the thin waterfall and the hanging cypresses, and on those nights where I try you shall stay in your set under the large overhanging rock."

"Done, and done," said the tanuki, "and as the challenge was mine then I shall try first. Come tomorrow I shall do my best to drive the monk from the temple and make it my set."

The next morning the fox rose early and climbed from his den beside the thin white waterfall and walked through the forest paths to the place where the forest overlooked the stream that the monk had carved to run alongside his temple. The monk, wearing only his fundoshi, was washing out the clothes that he normally wore. He was tall and slim, with muscles like cords along his arms, muscles that showed strength and were not necessarily beautiful, but the curve of the monk's back from the nape of his neck down to the rise of his fundoshi was lovely to behold, the fox couldn't help the way that his eyes lingered on the slim length of his thighs. He did not bother to hide, for he was small and well camouflaged when the monk looked in his direction and he saw that the monk had eyes the colour of the deep waters of the sea to the west. He could see that the monk's face was well proportioned for a human, but that he was thin and young, and knew then how he would drive the monk away.

That night when the moon was full and poured down like water over the small temple several great demons took to the woods about the temple. They rattled the trees and roared. They stamped their feet and growled through the woods. "We are the youma of the forest," they screamed with their mutated human voices, "and we can smell a man has entered our sacred groves, and we shall rend his limbs from him, we shall gobble down the meat from his bones and suck on his kidneys like sweet red beans, so you should run before we can catch you."

The monk opened the door to the simple temple, "yes," he said quietly, "I can see that you are very frightening," but there was no fear in his voice, "but this is my temple and although youma are to be feared there is little to fear from a tanuki pretending to be one. So unless you have some business with me I would ask that you leave." And the monk closed the door behind him on the rather embarrassed tanuki.

The next night it rained. The monk was roused from his sleep by the sound of someone banging on his door. He opened the door to a young boy with a wealth of hair the colour of burnished oak and eyes the colour of twilight. He wore fine robes though they were waterlogged and ruined. "Oh, thank the Buddha," said the boy, "I am the last son of the second son of the Oda Clan, and I was travelling near here with my retinue when we were set upon by bandits, my retainers urged that I run and I am glad to have found another person."

The monk said nothing but opened up the small temple to the boy. He helped the young lord undress from his fine and ruined clothes and although his storm blue eyes lingered on the curve of the boy's stomach he did nothing but wrap him in one of the rugs he had brought with him. He sat him beside the fire and brushed out his hair with his own comb and gave him a shallow bowl of rice and thick miso.

When the boy asked him his name he answered only with a grunt but the boy listened enchanted as the monk tended him. "I have nothing to give you," the boy said, "except myself," and he opened the robe he wore to reveal the velvet length of his chest with pale pink nipples. He bared the sleeping sea horse of his penis and the smooth length of his thighs. He kneeled in front of the monk wearing nothing but his long burnished oak hair.

He could see the dilemma that presented itself to the monk, for he was virtuous and the boy was very beautiful and wanton, his fingers pressed to his own mouth.

"I need not such things," the monk said finally though it was a struggle as he fought within his own desires for the boy was very beautiful and the monk was desirous.

"Then let me take you come dawn to my father's lands where you can be rewarded for your kindness. My father is a lord of the Oda clan who have the ear of the emperor and if my flesh does not please you then perhaps,"

The monk cut him off, "it is not that you do not please me," he said, "it is that you please me too well, I am dedicated to the Buddha and I have no need for desires of the flesh."

"Let me take you to my father's lands, let me reward you."

The monk then frowned, "I wonder how a lord of the Oda clan would care to pay the monk saviour of a wild fox, for no human born has eyes the colour of twilight like a certain fox that lives in the area nearby."

The fox laughed for a moment and then stole a kiss from the handsome monk and turning, changed into his fox form and escaped through the door of the temple with a high yip, leaving the poor monk confused and pressing his own callused fingertips to his mouth where the fox had kissed him.

The next night, though the moon was overcast and the air chill, a great many horses pulled up to the small temple. A great soldier dismounted and unravelled a scroll that he had tucked into the belt of his armour. "Is this the monk of the temple of the full moon on the mountain?" he asked.

The monk opened the door and looked at the great soldier, he had a wooden torch in his hand as he stepped down to the path. "It is." He said.

"I have come from the emperor, his onmyoji has had a great dream that included you. It seems that the empress will not survive the month unless you are present at her side." The monk nodded, "I bring this warrant from his serene highness demanding that you travel to Edo and are presented to the emperor himself."

The monk looked across the great collection of soldiers and vast horses that pawed and stamped at the ground with their impatience.

"I am sure that it will be a great shame if the month ends and the empress, may the Buddha shine his love upon her, does expire, but I cannot see why the emperor, who of course is wiser than I would send a tanuki to bring such a message," he swept back his torch to reveal that the last and most imposing of the horses had the tail of a tanuki. A few stray sparks caught the tanuki's tail and he squealed in pain and ran off through the forest screaming and wailing as he went.

"And if you are watching, master fox," the monk said to the forest, "I do not care for these games that you play. I came here to be free of the games of men, and I do not care to be included in the games of animals who think themselves cunning."

The fox that had been watching did not sleep that night, or the next. He spent the day after that rummaging through the woods, with his human hands he wove a basket of twigs and gathered mushrooms and herbs from the woods, and covered them with the delicate wild flowers that grew in the shadow of the great heavy trees. Taking his fox form, for it was the one in which he was most comfortable, he carried the basket in his jaws and waited on his belly for the monk to open the door to the temple.

The monk looked at the fox askance, as he offered him the woven basket with the treasures of the forest. "I am sorry," the fox said, "the tanuki and I were jealous of the ease of your life in the temple and he and I made a wager. He bet that whichever of us could drive you from the temple could take it as our own. For that I apologise for you are kind and we mistreated you.

"The tanuki was scorched by your fire and has run into the next territory and is unlikely to return, and if it is your will I too will leave the forest, but I ask that you are merciful because I have a small den beside a thin waterfall where the water soothes me to sleep. It is not much but it is mine and I would keep it."

The monk made a hn sound, "I do not care where it is that you live," he said to the fox, "so you can keep your den beside the waterfall, but if you try to trick me again I shall be much less merciful than I have been."

The fox wriggled on his belly as a dog does to appease the stronger members of his pack. The monk hned again. "Thank you." The fox said rolling on his back to bare his throat. "I shall stay out of your way."

"I have no need of pleasures of the flesh," the monk said after a long silence between them, "but I am far from the land of men and sometimes even us monks that have retired to such places as to contemplate the nature of the world and Buddha can feel the lack of company. You do not need to avoid me, young fox, but do not seek me out."

The fox slipped then into his human form, using his magic to dress himself in coarse robes, like the ones the monk wore, and kissed his hand on the flesh that stretched between thumb and finger with his soft pink lips, his long burnished oak hair falling in waves down his back. "Thank you. I shall call on you only on nights when the moon is new, and I shall bring you treasures from the forest as thanks for your kindness."

The monk shirked his hand away from the fox and without saying anything else he stepped into the temple.

_The boy's stomach gurgles and Relena laughs, then looks at her watch. "It is late," she says, "I've gone on too long, soon enough you will be sitting up to midnight to make sure that the terrible onmyoji meets his fate." Her smile is warm and kind, "and I no longer have the authority to just whisk you away. Daniel," she calls over her guard, "I'll be fine, will you take the young master home?"_

"_Certainly Lady Relena," the servant says. _

_The boy tries to tell her he doesn't need the attention but she doesn't listen. She talks over him with the arrogance of the elderly._

"_And see him into the house, it's late and who knows what kind of ragamuffins are wandering about at this time of the evening." She reaches forward and kisses the boy on the cheek. She smells powdery and dry, and over it is the cloying scent of roses. "I will see you tomorrow, and I will tell you about how the monk and the onmyoji became entangled again."_

_She knows even then that the boy will have lost Daniel within a hundred yards, she is almost testing him, and yet hoping that she is wrong and he does have a home to return to._


	4. Chapter 4

_The old lady sits in the gazebo with a pink shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She is wearing heavy boots and has a second thermos sat beside her on the wooden bench. Her heavy braid hangs over her shoulder like a silver rope and at the end is a violet ribbon. It is a vivid splash of colour against the black and pink. She looks tired, and in her hands is another piece of knitting, although this one is a dark rich purple and looks to be the makings of a scarf._

_When she sees him, and he is wearing the sweater she has made, she smiles, and then mocks a frown. "You're late." She says, "I was beginning to wonder if you were going to show up."_

"_I had something to do," the boy says._

_She just smiles at him again and offers him one of the sandwiches out of her bag and then hands him the second thermos. "The way you wolf down the food I give you," she says, "I'd think it was the only decent food you got."_

_For a moment the boy looks panicked, as if she has learned some terrible secret from him but then he realises she might just be teasing, although it's hard to tell with her, and smiles. "You make good sandwiches," he says and offers her a shaky smile. "And you tell the best stories."_

_Relena just laughs, her hands making quick work of the scarf in her hands as it grows, the needles clacking. "Do you know I never understood why old ladies knit? I do now, it gives my hands something to do whilst I can listen or talk. It's a good hobby to have, although everyone I know now has more knitted things than they know what to do with. Do you think you could find a use for a knitted doily?"_

_He laughs and she laughs with him, "but you are not here for my sandwiches and soup, or to hear me talk about knitting, you want to know what happened between the fox and monk." He at least has the decency to look abashed. "I thought for a moment," she continues, "that another child would show and I would be stuck telling Cinderella, I must admit that I am enjoying myself telling the story of the fox and the monk, more than I thought that I would." She takes a deep breath, her hands never slowing, "now where was I?"_

Over the following months the fox brought what treasures he found in the forest to the monk, until he began to break the stricture of only calling on the monk when the moon was new. At first the monk ranted and raved and hned and did his best to ignore the fox.

The fox did not care. He would show up in his human form, his hair bound back by golden wire he had found beside the road one day. He would bring the tales he heard from the men's road that he sometimes visited in his fox form, and sometimes stole from and brought the treasures to the monk.

The monk pretended not to listen.

The fox bathed with the monk and laughed with the monk, they shared food and sometimes they talked, they never mentioned their pasts, for those things had already been and gone, but sometimes they talked of the future. They talked of girls with the dread fascination of someone who has never seen one. And sometimes they laughed.

Through the fox's perseverance against the monks determination to ignore him the two of them came to share an easy camaraderie that was only possible by the fact that for as much time as they spent together they spent an equal time apart.

One day the fox did not come when the monk expected him. He did not know what he intended when he walked into the forest. He trekked through the wood he did not know listening to what he knew of the fox's den, of how it was beside a thin waterfall where the water laughed. So he followed the thin stream he had diverted, climbing over rocks and up the slope until he found the small laughing waterfall, and in the shadow of a large rock he found the small fox.

The fox's nose was dry and his breath was sweet so the monk picked him up in his arms and carried him back to the temple. He laid the small fox down on a pile of rugs next to the fire which he brought up, he gave the fox water from the stream and bowls of miso, he gave him sweet potato and baked fish.

He gave him tea that he had dried himself from a wild camellia and he laid his futon next to the mountain of rugs that the fox slept on. He wasn't sure how to treat a fox but he gave him the same consideration that the monks at the last temple ha had been at had given him when he was sick and he prayed.

When he awoke the fox was still asleep and lying in his futon in his human form. He had curled against the monk in the night, drawn to his body heat and the soft sound of his heart beating. The monk lay on his futon and looked at the fox. His skin was like fresh milk and his hair the colour of burnished oak, and his lips were the pale pink of a new rose. He could see the soft crinkles of the fox's lips and before he knew what he was doing he sought to recapture the feeling that the fox had given him when he had kissed him on the mouth. He pressed his own mouth against the fox's.

The fox awoke to the kiss and pressed himself into it, he opened his mouth, slipping and sliding it over the monk's. And when a tongue slipped out to better taste the faint taste of the fox he brought his own to meet it. He was surprised at the feel of hands that cupped the back of his head to bring him closer.

Then when he opened his eyes he found himself staring into striations of blue and grey, framed with thick dark long lashes and the monk rolled them so that the fox lay on the monk's stomach pushing the monk so that he lay between his thighs. As their tongues pushed against each other one of the monk's hands found its way to the curve of the fox's ass and began to push down so that his own hips ground against the monks and he groaned into the kiss.

That broke the spell between them, the monk jerked back pushing the fox away from him and gathering one of the rugs about his shoulders he fled. The fox sat for a moment blinking in shock, his penis was a heavy weight between his legs, rubbed hard by the monk's hands and mouth. When he saw the horror that they had inadvertently wrought on the monk, he slipped into his fox form, ignoring the salt water that formed in his eyes and the burning lump in the back of his throat. He ran and ran and ran back to his den beside the waterfall that seemed to laugh at him.

He made a point of avoiding the monk and the places he was likely to go. He ate little and only stayed in the dark places of the forest, keeping mostly to his den and let the dirt cake his fur.

He was surprised when he heard voices in the places that he was haunting. "Are you sure that that is the one?" the voice said. The fox crept closer.

It was two great oni; their edges were gathered tattered shadows.

The fox hid under a bush and could tell that perhaps he had deluded himself for they could easily see the temple and the monk bent over scrubbing the small veranda of his temple. The oni were watching him. They were creatures of shadow and teeth and claws so the fox squatted down and did his best to pretend to be dead so that they would not notice him for they were the type of oni who would rend apart any living creature that the y found.

"That is the monk," the oni said. "Our master has marked him since before he was born, he laid his hand upon the child whilst he still wriggled in his mother's belly and now that we have found him it is time to lay upon him our master's curse."

"Is any one around to hear us talk?"

The oni twirled around with the stench of rotten meat and carcasses left too long in the sun. "There is just a dead fox," the oni said, "and it does not matter any way for our master has laid a compulsion upon us that any that over hears our plans that their heart will explode in their chests if they try to tell anyone, and their brains in their heads if they try to tell the young monk. We have spent twenty years searching for him and now that we have found him our master would be displeased if his plans were foiled by so simple a thing." He laughed then, it was a terrible sound of steel on stone, "and who is to tell him, this dead fox?"

The fox did its best not to move as a fly descended and crawled along his face despite that it tickled almost unbearably.

"How will our master kill the boy?" the smaller of the oni asked.

"To ensure his own immortality," the larger of the oni explained, "he can use no violence or poison to kill the boy, so he has devised a terrible spell to do it in their stead. The boy will have three dreams.

"In the first he will dream of a box," the oni said.

"In the second he will dream of a key."

"and in the third he will use the key to open the box and his soul will be taken into the realm of the Emperor of dreams apart from his body, and without his soul his body will wither and die because he cannot take food and he cannot take water and deep in his enforced sleep he will die without ever seeing again the sun."

The fox did his best to ignore the fly as it dipped its forelegs into the openings of his nose and rubbed together its thin legs though he wanted to sneeze.

"And that will make our master immortal?" the small oni asked.

"Certain lives are tangled in the great skein and whilst this boy lives so does the master, but if the boy should die then the master's life force will betaken from the skein and he shall live without death, so say the three witches who serve him."

"Well," the small oni said measuring the sky and how far the moon had journeyed across it. "We must return to Kyoto before the dawn and tell our master that we have given the monk the dream."

And the two oni vanished into the shadows of the trees and once they had gone the fox took a shaky breath and began to fear for the monk who had been kind to him when he had no cause to and whose kiss still burned like liquid fire though he had done his best to push the thought of him from his mind.

Unsure what else to do, knowing he could not tell another of the terrible dilemma he had he returned to his den and prepared to mourn the monk and upon his death to utterly destroy the small temple he had built.

As he moved within the confines of his den his feet found the small jade dragon that was his treasure. He looked into it's tiny red eyes and remembered his brother who was almost forgotten, a faint scent that he sometimes recalled, and how his brother had said that it had been their father's. He didn't remember his parents at all. Neither did the monk.

It was all he had.

It was all he had to offer.

Taking the jade dragon into his mouth the fox began a journey. He travelled across the forests as fast as he could, and over mountains and through rivers until he came to a forgotten grove in the very heart of Japan. Around it the trees hid great precipice that looked over a small lake with a smaller island inside. With a prayer in his heart that this was all that he had to offer the fox through the dragon into the water and then returned to his den.

This is the dream that the fox dreamed.

He was in a great plain where he was neither fox nor man. Around the great plain were mountains that reached higher than the sky. The clouds were made of fire. In the centre of the plain, atop a grassy knoll, upon which there was a great spur of stone, sat a great fox with eyes the colour of amber and fur the colour of fire, around his neck was a great ruby and he wore a cloak of raven feathers, and he was many things but he had chosen to be a fox for this dream. Flittering around his head was a bird that was sometimes a nightingale, and sometimes a canary and sometimes a man with golden hair in a military uniform. This all made sense with the perfect clarity of dreams.

Seeing the great fox with the feather cloak the little fox was silent.

"You have given your one treasure to talk to me, and although it was not mine it belonged to someone I knew who will be given heart when the tides return it to him. You have given all you had to talk to me but yet you remain silent."

The fox apologised and pushed itself down on its belly, like a dog that has displeased its master.

"You do not need to abase yourself to me, little one," the great fox said, "you have come to ask me a question, will you not ask it of me?"

"I," the fox said and as he looked at the great fox and how he was simultaneously a great dragon, a mighty lion, a proud man in a military uniform.

"He is afraid." The Nightingale said in a deep rich voice.

"yes, my lord," the fox said, "I am afraid. I live apart from the lands of man because man was cruel to me, but a man came to my forest, a monk. He is a kind man and I owe him many things, but a great onmyoji has set a terrible curse upon him. He will have three dreams, in the first he will dream of a box, in the second he will dream of a key, and in the third he will use the key to open the box and he will be trapped in dreams until he dies."

The great fox swished his fiery tale and bared his teeth in anger. "Lies," he said, and the nightingale sang a sad song about his head.

"No, my lord, I wish to save him for what he has done for me." The fox protested.

"You lie to him because you lie to yourself," the nightingale said.

The fox thought long and hard as he watched the multifaceted diamond moons of this great plain. "I would save him," he said, "because I love him."

"Was that hard to say?" the great fox asked, "but I warn you that the love of a fox and a man can not be achieved except in dreams, and you are doubly damned because he is a monk and sworn to Buddha even unto death. He may dream of being with you but it can be no more than a dream."

"I know," the little fox told him, "and I have naught to win his heart anyway, I am just a small fox, but I heard the demons as they wove the dream into his world and I would save him. I have no worth in this life, I am just a small fox, but I would save the monk because he is a good man, and also it would destroy the onmyoji that cast the spell on him and I would spite him."

The great fox cast back his heads, each of them, as if in slow motion, and laughed and the nightingale laughed with him. "There is only one way to save him," the nightingale said, "you must take his place in the dream and dream the dream in his stead."

"but I do not know how," the fox told him.

He stood up and with a flourish of his black cloak of raven feathers they were in another dream, another place in the emperor's great domain. There were great beasts there, the size of lions and proud with dragon's scales and peacock feathers depending on how one looked at them. "These," the great fox said, "are the Baku, the dream eaters, my gift to mankind. When a person has a bad or odd dream it lingers for a moment about their head and they wish for a Baku to come and eat it. This is the place where the Baku wait, if you are lucky you might be able to beat them to the dream and eat it in their place and the dream will be your own. But," he stopped, "you alone must dream the last dream if you are to save the monk, and the Baku may be large but they are cunning and quick."

The fox, for the first time in his dream, smiled, "ah," he said, "but I am a fox and foxes are nothing if we are not cunning and quick. Thank you," he told the great fox. "I will be in your debt."

The great fox said nothing as he and his entourage of the single golden nightingale vanished into the darkness under his cloak of raven feathers.

_Relena looks up at how the sky around the gazebo darkens with winter setting in, "I'll finish this part tomorrow, it's getting rather late and your parents will be worried."_

"_They won't notice," the boy protests._

_She looks at the finished sweater in her hands, and how the boy has his hands wrapped around his chest. "Here," she says, passing it to him. "You take this, it's thick wool, it will keep you warm."_

"_But," the boy protests her kindness, "you made it for your friend. You said that when I asked you."_

"_I did," Relena tells him with a smile, "but he has no need for another sweater and he will not notice its lack where you will appreciate its presence." Her smile is winning. "The rain is cold, are you sure you won't let me drive you home? My driver won't mind."_

_The boy shrugs off the question, holding the thick blue sweater to his chest like she might change her mind and take it back. "I'll be fine." He says. He pulls the sweater over his head and she smiles. He does not know about the tracker she had her security plant on it, she has her suspicions about the boy and wants them desperately to be disproven._


	5. Chapter 5

_She does not come the next day, or the day after that. He visits the park daily but she does not appear. He begins to worry._

_After a week, in which she has not appeared, a tall man with a shock of salt and pepper hair and eyes like fire. He is a strong man with broad shoulders and despite his age, and he is easily as old as the lady, he carries himself like a young man. There is something in his stance that suggests to the boy that this man, unlike the lady, is a threat. He wears a black wool overcoat and has a PDA in his hand that he quickly stows in his pocket when he sees him. "Are you here to see the Lady Relena?" he asks and his voice is clipped and firm._

"_She was telling me a story." He answers._

"_She has had a fall," the man says, "she wanted to let you know. I am to buy you lunch and tell you part of a story."_

"_If it's all the same," the boy says, "I'll be fine on my own." The man rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath in a language the boy does not understand. _

"_It is not all the same," the man says, "the Lady Relena will never let me hear the end of it if I do not do this, and she has the amazing ability to tell when I am lying. Come, there is a lovely little bistro down the street. I am prepared to treat you to lunch, you look like you need it."_

"_Thank you, Mister," he leaves it open because he does not know the man's name. It looks as if even with her absence that the old lady is bullying him into accepting her kindnesses._

"_Barton," he answers, "My name is Trowa Barton." He takes an inordinate amount of pride in saying his name, as if he is proud to be a Barton though to the boy it means nothing._

_Although the man, Barton, calls it a bistro it is clear that the place he takes him is a restaurant, and that he is known there. He orders a table for two and does not have to wait. It is in a shadowed niche, out of the way of prying eyes, Barton sits with his back to the wall where he can scan the restaurant for what he considers to be a threat, and the boy suspects that under his perfectly tailored shirt and black jeans that he has a gun._

"_How do you know the Lady Relena?" the boy asks, he is worried he might have been lured here to be killed for the presumption of consorting with a real Lady._

"_Lena and I go back," the man answers, "we have a history, now you can order what you like, I'm good for it." He smiles at his own joke; "I understand they even have tuna sandwiches on the menu."_

"_Is she your wife?" the boy asks nervously, his eyes scan the menu but he doesn't really see the words on the paper._

"_Me and Lena?" the man's laugh is dry, "no Lena never looked at that way, and I never looked at her at all." He calls over the waiter and orders tea, "now she told me that she was telling you the story of the war."_

"_No," the boy corrects swiftly, "she was telling me about the fox, the monk and the evil sorcerer." Barton smiles in such a way that suggests that he knew that all along, perhaps he was just testing the boy._

"_If you've made your mind up what you would like to eat, I'll begin."_

Far to the west of the forest in which the fox and the monk lived were the lands of men, and in the centre of those was the capital of Kyoto, where the emperor lived. And just outside the royal palace there was a great mansion that belonged to a magnificent onmyoji. He was an old man and very rich, he had a great mansion beside the palace, a second house where he kept his second wife, a small girl with golden hair and a soft voice, and a small house on the outskirts of town in which lived three witches.

The onmyoji was rich and well respected. He was high in the bureau of divination and his wives were both very beautiful, and in the south wing of his great house was his concubine a girl who was barely fifteen with lips like plums of whom he was very fond. His two wives and his concubines were close friends and spent hours together without quarrel.

He had the ear of the emperor and many of the great and powerful lords of the city felt that they owed their success to him.

He was an old man with a knee that did not bend the way that it should and he had given up his hand for more power and had replaced it with a hook. Yet his wives and his concubine adored him but the onmyoji was unhappy.

He was afraid.

He had been born into his life rich with fear.

He had been a fearful child who had grown into a fearful man.

He was not afraid of any specific thing but he woke in the morning with the fear thick in his throat and he went to his bed with the fear thick about him.

He had gathered his magics and his powers, and had become a powerful master of yin and yang so as to overwhelm his fear.

He had failed.

Nearly twenty years before he had learned of a boy whose death might alleviate his terror, that by accepting the boy's calm as his own he would attain the peace he sought.

To do so he had to kill the boy without violence or pain.

He found the mother when she was still heavy with child and intended to murder her to take the boy's calm as his own, but she sensed the evil intent within him and ran and he had lost him.

As he laid out his articles of divination on a painted square of silk on a small table in the centre of his favourite room with his wives in the next room talking he knew that the boy was now a man and lived his life in perfect calm, without fear, but he did not know how to find him.

He gave offerings to all the gods and demons that he knew and the spirits he controlled but they could not find the boy.

He sent men searching for a boy with eyes the colour of the Edo seas but they could not find the boy.

Without other recourse he went to the small house he owned on the outskirt of the town that he had let to three witches.

He did not like to use their power for they charged a great price but his terror was greater than his fear of them.

The house had been new when they had moved in when he was a young man but now it was derelict. The paper screens were torn and there was a large hole in the roof. The three witches kept to the shadows and sold herbs and remedies to the local women but at a high price and often the remedies that they purchased did not work out exactly as they had planned. And it was said that men who stayed the night in the house were never seen again, but because the onmyoji served the emperor none knew that they were beholden to him.

The three women were beautiful but hard. The eldest had hair that she wore in two knots either side of her head, her expression was hard and she wore blue trimmed with gold, but it hung open mostly, except where her obi gathered it at her waist.

The second eldest had hair as short as an indentured servant and a sweet face. She wore the Hakama of a man with only a cloth about her breasts. A large golden design hung from her left ear.

The youngest had hair the colour of sake and wore the hanzubon and haori of a child with the ruined haori pulled over her bosoms. Her eyes were the colour of morning but of the three women she was the one who scared him most because he suspected that she might not be alive. Her skin was cool and she was utterly without mercy. Where her sisters could be wooed with promises and even flirted with, not so the youngest. There was grey marbling on her bare legs and sores on her feet, and her hands felt like pieces of clay.

A few weeks before the events of this tale the onmyoji visited the witches in their dark house when the night was dark without moon. They had been the ones who had told him how to gain his peace twenty years before but the woman had escaped him when he had planned to strangle her and kill the baby to take its destiny as his own.

He told them how his sleep was ruined because he had no peace.

He told them that he could not enjoy his teenage concubine's beauty because he had no peace.

He told them how his wives worried because he had no peace and asked again about the man with the eyes the same colour as the emperor's seas.

"In the province of Mino," the youngest one told him, her eyes were like chips of ice, "and on the side of a certain mountain there is a small temple It is so small and minor that there is a single monk to tend it. He is the boy you lost that night in the Great Snow, and he feels no fear. He has achieved a state of perfect calm but within the month he will lose that and will question all that he is and what he wants. If you can kill him before the end of the month you will take his calm as his own, and the rest of his life. I could weave the strand of his life into your own so that you will take what is his."

From the pocket of his robes he pulled sweet meats and shining gewgaws which he put into their hands and stroked her hair though it felt like strands of seaweed under his fingers. He caressed her cheek, which felt like the flesh of a rotten fish.

She cooed for a few minutes then pushed him away. Her sisters kept the onmyoji in the house when she returned with a piece of stained cloth which she gave him, it looked like it might be stained with blood, but painted on it was a picture of what must have been the monk with his blue eyes and the onmyoji with a great shadow between them. From the jars on the shelves she took certain herbs, wrapping each in a small square of filthy silk and then gathered them all in the painted fabric. "Gather unto you all your servants of darkness and burn these herbs and a piece of the monk's shadow and he will be taken into the dream world and his body left behind in this world will die, but," she stopped and looked at him with her eyes that were like limpid pools, "if he does not die within the month then you will die in his place."

"This," she said, "is the nature of the spell, he will have three dreams, in the first he will see his mother and she will present him with a box," from the cabinet beside her she took a small lacquered box which was chipped at the corners and gave it to the onmyoji, "in the second dream he will see his father and he will give him the key which opens the box." From her haori she pulled out a small filigree key chased with a curling dragon around the bar. "In the third dream he will see the person that he would love if he lived and on their instruction he will use the key to open the box and he will be trapped in the dream world and without a soul he will die. You must know this to start the spell."

He returned to his great palace and pushed away his beautiful teenage concubine with lips like plums and his wife who wore her hair in two twists on either side of her lovely face. From the kitchens he took a white plate and measured the herbs unto it in small piles. He took a candle that he had gotten from a demon that was made with the fat of unborn babies strangled with their birth cords in the womb, which he used only for the greatest magics he performed.

The flame burned clear and bright and on the first night he took a pinch of the first herb and sprinkled it onto the flame. When he was certain it was all gone, he extinguished the flame.

One the second night he lit the candle again and taking a pinch of the second herb he burned it as he had the first.

On the third night he lit the candle and took a pinch of the third herb, which was a paste, and burned it between his fingers. He sent his most powerful oni to the Mino province where they would steal something of the monk's; it was then that the fox overheard them.

On the fourth night he burned the next herb that smelt of rotten things and the stench lingered throughout the house until the sun set the next day. Although it made his concubine sick to the stomach and his wife complained he knew he would not back down because with each day the sense of calm that settled over him grew and grew.

On the fifth day he took a pinch from the plate where it seemed to be empty but was in fact a piece of the monk's shadow that the oni had stolen and burned it as the candle burned out and the spell was complete.

As the candle flickered out in a pool of it's own grease the onmyoji for the first time felt a sense of peace.

_The boy looks up from his plate of food, Barton has told him the tale over a cup of tea that he sometimes tops up. "I think that's more than enough for today," he says, "it is a good place to leave the story for now, someone will come by tomorrow to tell you the next part."_

"_Will it be Lady Relena?" the boy asks, as he takes the last few bites from his plate, true to his word Barton treated him to a full meal, which was a large bowl of salad, a huge slab of lasagne and a tall glass of ice cold milk. _

"_Unfortunately not," Barton said, "and I can't guarantee that it will be myself, but Lena only trusts a few of us with such delicate tasks, and only a few of us even know the story." For a second he looks wolfish. "Are you okay to get home? I can give you a lift if you like."_

"_It's okay," the boy tells him, "I only live a little walk away."_

_Barton reaches into his pocket and takes out his wallet, he lays several bills on the table and then looks at the money. He takes out a few more bills and stuffs them into the pocket of his coat, then pushes his wallet into the pocket of her jeans. "Here," he says handing her the coat, "the weather's turned cold and you can always give me it back tomorrow."_

_Holding the coat, which is much too long for him, over his arm he looks at Barton with shock. The man is tall and thin but something about him reminds the boy of Relena. "Lena's son died," he tells the boy, "you remind her of someone and having met you I will agree you are very like him, you can fill a comfortable space within her, since she has started telling you the story she has been more at peace with herself and for that alone all of us would come to spoil you and tell you the story she began."_

"_Is she in the hospital?" the boy asks, surprised as they walk out of the restaurant._

"_No, she lives in the Residence," the way he says it it's clear that he means the palace by the sea. "If you want to visit her go to the east gate and ask for me, I'll take you through to her."_

"_Why?" the boy asks._

"_Because you're her friend." Barton answers calmly, then leaving him with his coat and the money he has deliberately left in it, he just walks away._


	6. Chapter 6

_True to Barton's word he is not the one to meet him. It is a Chinese man who sits in the gazebo with a strict posture. His hair is gathered in a queue at the back of his neck and he wears wire-framed glasses over his eyes. He is also wearing a heavy roll neck sweater, not unlike the one that the Lady Relena has given him, and he looks like he might be taller even than Barton. He looks at him and weighs up his entire being with a glance. "You should be in school," he says, he has a slight accent, "you are too young to be wandering the streets at this time of day. What school do you attend?"_

_The boy does not answer him. He won't meet the Chinese man's gaze. "I am on the board at Saint Gabriel's it is a fine school. If you are not enrolled come to the gate tomorrow and mention my name, you will be taken to my office and I will enrol you. It is not fitting for a boy of your age to be outside the reaches of education." _

_The boy blinks, "Barton said that you were quiet and Lena mentioned that she worried over you," he is stiff and stern; there is no give in the man at all. "If you wish to discuss my offer, which is offered to you on Lena's behalf, I am willing to talk to your parents about it."_

_The boy flushes and then protests unaware of even what he is saying, but he does not want to continue this conversation but he thinks that the Chinese man will not let it slide. "I will give you a week to make your decision, but you are still welcome to tour the school if you wish. Saint Gabriel's is a good school; Lena herself attended it as a girl. It also comes with full lodging."_

"_My parents couldn't afford such a school." He says bluntly._

"_Who mentioned paying for it?" the Chinese man tells him, "I am a member of the board I can have you enrolled with my recommendation and that of Lena, and I can think of two other alumni who you have not yet met who will also second your entry." He stands up in a stiff motion that looks almost painful. "I am under instruction from both Lena and Barton to feed you and to continue the story that Lena was telling you, and that if you wished then to take you to the residence to see her."_

_The boy decides that Barton may have been strict but he is much preferable to this Chinese man. "Now, there is a wondrous noodle bar not far outside the park that does the most divine pork dim sum." He walks along in a swish of a silk duster that is lined in rich wool. "It also has the only Chinese green tea in all of Sanq, I am sure that they might even be able to make something for you to drink, I have in my life only met one other person at your age who drank green tea."_

_It is a rather downmarket establishment in comparison to the expensive restaurant that Barton took him into, it has cloth hangings over the door and a woman meets the Chinese man at the door with a burble of spoken Chinese the boy does not understand. _

_He calls her Amah and is older even than the Lady Relena, without questioning she ushers the two of them into a small booth and without even asking what they would like to eat she puts plates of food in front of them, there is a metal pot of tea set on a brass plinth in the centre of the table. She brings the boy a tall glass of cold lemonade mixed through with ginger._

"_Now, I understand with the story that Lena was telling you that Barton took it up to the monk's dream after the onmyoji's machinations."_

In his temple of the side of the mountain, unaware of the machinations of the onmyoji the monk went about his daily life and wondered if he would see the fox. He did not, he tended his small garden and fished the small stream that ran outside his temple, taking the fish and putting any that he did not eat in the larger river where they would flourish. He made himself a garden with the river sand and tended it carefully but his thoughts were on the fox no matter how hard he tried them not to be.

That night as he laid down in his futon and smelled the lingering fragrance of the fox upon his pillow he found it hard to sleep and when he finally fell asleep he dreamt. He dreamt of a woman with a careworn face, she wore a kimono that was frayed and ragged at the edges; she had a pair of chopsticks holding back coarse hair that was a rich earth brown just like his own. There were crow's feet at the corners of eyes that were the colour of the seas of Edo after a storm. She had the same eyes that he did.

In her arms she held a clay bowl that was well used and it was full of fluffy white rice.

The house she was in was old but clean and well kept. There were bowls stacked up on the shelf, and small jars along the walls. The tatami were swept, although like her kimono ragged about the edges, and from one wall on hooks there hung a variety of objects like bundles of candles and bales of rope. There was even a lobster pot, which had other items inside, like chalk and string.

The monk sat at a table with two other boys and a girl, of them the boy's had the same rich earth brown hair but the girl, whose hair was slick and glossy black like raven feathers had the bright blue eyes. One of the boys was a child and to the side of his face there was a bright bloody smear that obscured one of his chocolate brown eyes.

The others were all grown and older than him. The girl wore the robes of a nun with a heavy golden chain around her neck. Her clothes were very fine and she had pickled plums laid out exactly upon her plate. Her skin was golden and rich but as clear as that of a girl much younger and she had a look of peace about her eyes that suggested a life of utter serenity. She was a great beauty and he had heard of her when he had been in the temple with the other monks for she was blessed indeed but he had no idea why she might be in his dream.

The other man, who was at the same time a boy, wore mud brown linen with a komon crest on one shoulder, like the woman's his obi was tattered and stained at the edges. There was a translucent quality to his skin as if he had gone hungry for a long period of his life, laid out on his plate were two golden sardines.

In front of the boy, who the monk knew was older than him, but appeared like a child of six or seven, had a long strip of lean pork laid out on his plate. He was sat on the bench on his knees so that he could reach with his back almost arched as he leant on his elbows.

In front of him there was a steak of rich raw tuna such as he had seen but never eaten. It was on a fine plate although the rest of the house was old and worn; it was the sort of plate that would be laid before a great member of the court.

Laying the large bowl of rice on the centre of the table the woman sat with a piece of tile instead of a plate. She laid a ball of sticky white rice on each plate and poured out beer and cups of water. Then she bowed her head and said a small prayer over them.

The monk knew in that moment that this was the mother he had never seen, because he could recognise in her those traits he knew to be in himself. She was like unto him in the set of her head, and in the way she held her hands. He understood that the other s around the table were his brothers and his sister, he recognised his sister as one of the great honours of the Buddhist church in Nippon.

"We are gathered together," his mother said, "to share this meal on this the anniversary day of my baby's birth." She said, and looked across to him, "and on that day as I ran into the Great Snow I found for him a home amongst the monks loyal to Buddha and I know it brought him a peace in life that could not have been given him as the son of a shop keeper in the lands of the Matsumoto."

She reached across to the monk and took his hand, "in death I gave you a gift that I could not give you in life," she said, "and so we celebrate this day with the greatest foods that I can give you, and to each of you your favourites. Now, my son, tell me your name?"

"Heero," the monk said quietly. "I was brought to a great temple by a Ronin who said that my name was Heero."

His mother reached out and stroked his cheek and her palm was rough. "It does my heart good to see you grown so well and so handsome. Your father would be proud of you because I know you have grown tall, strong and handsome. I would give you a gift, I know it cannot make up for a mother's presence in your life, but it is all that I can give."

She stood up in a singularly fluid motion that looked as if one moment she went from sitting to standing at the crates in the corner, then back within the blink of an eye.

In her hands she held out a beautifully lacquered black box that measured no longer than three inches by ten inches. Inlaid on the top was the image of three beautiful maidens, one had hair the colour of buckwheat and wore a structured blue kimono trimmed in gold, the second had hair that managed to be a shade darker than the lacquer of the box and wore a red kimono trimmed in silver, the third had hair the colour of pale sunshine and eyes like chips of ice, she wore a pink kimono trimmed in white.

He took the box from her hands and tried to open it but it was locked tight, she smiled and ran her hand through his coarse hair and then took the box slipping it into the gather of his kimono at his neck. He was not; he realised then, dressed like a monk, but as a rich gentleman with layers and layers of fine fabrics.

The brother who was still a child with the terrible bloodstain on the side of his face stepped forward and pressed into his hands a wooden horse that was rudely carved. "Father carved this for you," the boy said in a voice that was strangely adult, "but I was dead before you were born and it was lost, so I give it to you now."

His sister stood up and laying her hands upon his head in a blessing she reached into the folds of her robe and removed a piece of cloth stuffed like a fox. Strangely he remembered the toy from his own childhood, but now its eyes were like chips of lavender jade when before they had been simple black stitches. "Mother made this for you out of remnants of cloth from those bolts that we sold, it was stuffed with the soft husks from the mulberry bushes. But I had been taken into the temple by the time you were born and you were taken from us, I do not know what happened to it, but it was made for you." He took the stuffed fox as he had taken the wooden horse and placed it into the folds of his fine robes. Like his mother had she ran her hand through his hair in a fond gesture.

His elder brother stood up, he was taller than the monk and broader in the shoulders. He offered him a brass rattle in which hardened beans were inside a brass cage with a bell at the end. It was on a polished stick that looked like it had been chewed. "This was passed down through our family, I had it, then Nana, then Minoru and it would have been yours if Mother had not been driven out into the snow by hunger and fear of a visiting stranger."

He squeezed the monk's hand, "you may have grown apart from us but you are still the baby in our family."

His mother moved around the table and wrapped her arms about him and in her arms he felt like a small child and it felt like home. That amazed him, because he had never really had a home before the small temple that he had built himself. He felt very small and very vulnerable and allowed the lingering smell of cooking in her hair and clothes to soothe a hurt in him that he had not even known that he had.

She pressed her face against his and whispered into his ear, "wake up," she said, "and go with our love."

He woke up and the memory of the dream was heavy about him and he felt about for the lacquered box that he was so sure that had been there. It was gone. He stood up, wishing for the Baku to come and eat the dream to take it from him, and opened the door of his small temple to the morning, laying across the wood was a small stuffed fox made of scraps of fabric that had fallen to pieces many years before and given up it's stuffing of the husks of mulberries. In the dirt leading away from his temple, on the small path that led to the forest, was a trail of tiny fox prints.

_The green tea ice cream is sweeter than he expects and he rolls it around on his spoon with his tongue. The lemonade is spicy sweet and cleans his palate. Amah had given him a hot noodle soup with prawns and large chunks of soft tender chicken. The noodles were thick and fat and feel good in his belly._

"_I think this is a good place to leave the story for today," the Chinese man, who has introduced himself as Wufei says, pushing aside his plate and spinning his tea bowl on the table. There is a willow pattern on the dishes. "Do you wish to visit Lena?"_

_The boy shakes his head, "I should go," he says, "You're a busy man, I have taken too much of your time as it is."_

_The Chinese man laughs and finally stops playing with his tea bowl. "I am an old scholar, each time I tell a story I learn new nuances of a tale I thought I knew, there is much to be learned from the time spent with any person." His face is impassive as if he has never had an expression to stir his calm serenity. "It took a long time for me to learn what it meant to share time with other people." _

"_You are a professor." The boy tells him._

_The Chinese man laughs, "I became a professor much later, when I was a boy your age I," he smiles to himself, "I travelled and was proud and sent people away, I thought that they couldn't understand me because my family were killed and they wouldn't know my pain. I drove them away and took my temper out on those who were steadfast and remained my friends despite my best efforts."_

"_You mean like Lady Relena and Barton?" the boy asks._

"_Exactly like them," the Chinese man says, "Lena gave me a very lucky break, I think she sees that she might do the same for you. She was only the Queen of the World for a little time but she still sees us all as her children and mothers us all." He looks fond, "she is a very warm hearted and good person." He lifted his tea bowl and finished his tea, "she would sacrifice herself if we let her, but just as she mothers her then we look after her."_

_He reaches into his coat and pulls out a small black leather portfolio which he opens, "If you call at Saint Gabriel's tomorrow at ten I will be at the school to give you a guided tour but I will be busy after noon, I'm sure one of the five of us will meet you to continue the tale," he writes something down and then scratches something out with his pen. "It will most likely be either Duo or Heero."_

_The boy does not miss the names that he was told. When the Chinese man notices the reaction he smiles, "Lena is a romantic at heart." He says. "I will leave word with Amah that if you wish to eat something here later it is already paid for. It was nice meeting you." He stands up and offers out his hand to shake. The boy takes it and wonders when it was that he made a friend._


	7. Chapter 7

_The man that waited for him was clearly either a police officer or a soldier. He had strong broad shoulders and eyes like laser beams. He wore solid black but had a silver chain with a slight cross in the hollow of his throat. He made the boy wary and his entire frame seemed to stop the instinctive urge to flee. He knew that if he ran the man would effortless reach out to catch him._

"_I'm Yuy," the man introduced himself, "Lena asked me to call on you today, she said that she was telling you a story. Barton told me what to look for and to make sure that I fed you, Chang was annoyed that you did not ask for him this morning. Shall we go?"_

"_Where?" he asked, he wanted to run from this man, both Barton and the Chinese man had a lingering sense of strength, where this man, Yuy, exuded menace._

"_There is a noodle bar several blocks over. I like its food. I am to make sure you eat." He spoke in simple clipped sentences; just as there was no fat on his frame there was no flab in what he said either._

On the second night, with a belly full of stuffed peppers with yam and rice, the monk lay down on his futon, he scratched at his chest with the indulgence of one who has had a good day and thought for a brief moment on the strange dream that he had had the night before in which he had seen his mother and family, including those who were dead. The moment was fleeting before the soft summer night and the full belly lulled him to sleep.

He dreamt of a great temple like those he had spent his childhood in and in that great temple was a great table of ebony lacquered to an incredible sheen. On the table were many bowls of noodles and in each sat a pair of silver coloured chop sticks.

Around the table on tasselled cushions were many men, warriors, and monks and at the end of the table, in homespun fabric in comparison to their fine silks and velvets was a merchant.

Each of the men had their hair oiled and gathered into high topknots fastened with gold clips, except the merchant who had shaved the top of his head so that his dark hair circled his head.

Beauteous courtesans served the table and at the head, wearing layers of incense and silk was the most beautiful woman that the monk had ever seen. She had hair the colour of softly burnished oak and skin like milk, but her eyes were golden amber and when she saw him she smiled and her smile was vulpine.

She played a shamisen easily as tall as she was and the tune she played was haunting.

The beautiful courtesans in their layers of silk and gold guided him to the cushion that had been chosen for him. He sat uncomfortably as a girl with hair as black as the lacquered wood reached across the table to fetch him slices of the grilled meat that was on the table.

Showing off a white forearm she poured him wine and beer and tea.

He knew that he should feel some stirring in his belly for this girl, but instead he thought of the fox with his generous smile and felt nothing.

Even when the courtesan reached into the folds of his hakama to find his member and manipulate it he felt nothing.

He recognised some of the people around the table.

He recognised the great monk from his childhood, who had raised him and died shortly before he had gone to the mountain to build his temple.

He recognised the Ronin who had brought him to the temple when it had become his time to die.

He recognised the great lord who patronised his learning and had slipped him sweets when he thought no one was looking, that man had fallen from his horse many summers previous.

The merchant he recognised as a man who had given him a small stuffed fox and whom the Ronin distrusted. He assumed that this man must be dead as well.

So he suffered the ministrations of the beautiful courtesan, and he drank their wine and their beer and their tea and he eat their noodles and grilled meats and he listened to their conversation sure that in the morning that he would not remember it.

They discussed the journey to the west and the Buddha, and they discussed war and when it was justified and when it was not.

When the evening was over and the beautiful woman with the shamisen had laid down her instrument and retired with a man with eyes the colour of twilight, the merchant approached the young monk. "Do you know who I am?" he asked.

"I know only that when I was a child that you said that you would have a son my age and gave me a toy that you had made for him." The monk answered honestly.

"I am your father and I have little to give you for your life is richly lived and I am just a merchant, but I can give you this." And he gave him a golden key with rich ornamentation, it was small such as might fit into a jewellery box or a small chest, "it is all I have, my son, find your own way."

When the monk awoke the night was only half over and he shrugged away the dream with the instruction that the Baku take it, but high in the distance he was sure that he heard the yipping of a fox.

To his surprise he put the key down when he went to wash his face but when he went to pick it up again he realised that it was never there.

He went about his daily business about the temple, trying his best to shrug away what had in truth been two nights of incredibly bizarre and vivid dreams. He made sure to do hard manual labour so that when he eventually fell into his futon he was exhausted.

He did not dream that third night. He woke up bright and refreshed but as he lifted the broom to sweep out the small veranda asleep in his doorway was the fox. He looked so small and tiny and he was able to scoop him up in a single hand.

He set the tiny fox into the curve of his jacket because he really liked the fox and was very fond of him and he knew that it would keep him warm until he awoke.

The fox did not wake.

Midday came and went and still the fox did not wake.

The breathing of the fox was soft and shallow and he did not move in his sleep.

Evening came and the fox did not wake.

Night came and the fox did not wake.

The monk laid him out on his pillow beside his head and slept himself, thinking perhaps that the fox would wake in the night. He did not.

When the monk awoke the fox still slept as still and quiet as a dead thing.

He was unsure what else to do so he nestled the sleeping fox back into the curve of his jacket and began his trek, knowing it would take two days.

Halfway down the mountain he met an old man who was leaning heavily on a stick, the monk raced ahead to catch up with him. "Do you need help?" the monk asked him.

The old man turned back to him and then struck him across the shins with his stick. "You are a fool and an idiot both," the old man said, "I do not need your help, why should I need the help of a mountain monk who carries a fox in his jacket."

The monk wanted to curse because the blow across his shins had hurt but he didn't. "You are old and my legs are young and strong," the monk said instead, "I can help you."

"why should I need the help of a boy who lies."

"I don't lie," the monk said, "I am devoted to Buddha and I do not lie."

"Then why do you hold a fox in your jacket?" the monk was quiet as he walked alongside the old man for a few long moments.

"I am a monk," he said eventually, "beholden to the Buddha and all that he is."

The old man used his stick to strike him against the head this time instead of the shins. "How can you tell a truth to me if you cannot tell one to yourself, why would you help a fox?"

"Because he is my friend," the monk said, "because he was company when I thought I didn't need it, and I love him."

At that the old man softened, reaching into his robe and handed him a single gold coin with a notch cut through the centre. "The fox is trapped in dreams, take this token and for a gift perhaps the dream king will help you, he is the only one who can, but be warned, this path leads only to death."

"_I'm not sure I like this story," the boy said looking up from his noodles. "Lady Relena said that it was a happy story." He looked almost petulant; he was scared of the man sat opposite him._

"_It is," Yuy told him bluntly, "but we must suffer to appreciate what we have." He lifted his cup, staring into the inky depths of the strong black espresso. "Do you not want to know what happens to the monk in the kingdom of dreams?"_

_The boy lowered his eyes. "I do," he said, "I want them to be happy."_

_Yuy smiled, a fleeting thing against his cup. "There are many ways to be happy, Stephen," he says, "many ways indeed; I was an old man before I learned that lesson."_

"_Relena cast you as the monk in the story, did you save your fox?"_

_Yuy laughed, a brittle sound like gravel against broken glass. "That story isn't finished yet," he said, "but the chances are that you'll meet my fox tomorrow."_


	8. Chapter 8

_Chang met him at the gazebo with a scowl that looked as if it might be etched into his face. "You were meant to visit me at Saint Gabriel's." He said bluntly. He wore a heavy wool coat and muffler against the cold but underneath it he wore white. "Yuy told me that he had told you of my displeasure but again you did not visit me. I was not to be the one who spoke to you today, to tell you the next part of the story, but I asked if I could. It is disgusting that a boy of your age be without schooling."_

_The boy prepared to lie, to tell the old half-truth, that he was home schooled but Chang cut him off._

"_I tried to speak to your parents, so imagine my horror to discover that they were dead. You will come with me." There was no argument in his voice; he spoke in crisp orders. "Now, there is room for you to board at Saint Gabriel's, it will look after you till you reach majority."_

"_It's a private school." The boy protested as Chang led him to a waiting car, "I can't afford it."_

"_Money is of no matter, you have befriended the erstwhile Queen of Sanc," his tone suggested that although she might not have kept the title it was how that he thought of her, and it was how he would always think of her. "The patron and owner of the school, we can waive the fees, or Barton, Yuy, and Winner, Maxwell and I could easily afford them. We have no children of our own, but once we too were without family."_

_Despite the Chinese man's gruff nature it was clear that he had a heart to match his scowl._

"_Maxwell was orphaned at an early age," he continued, opening the door to the black sedan, "and he was taken in by Saint Gabriel's and despite a questionable beginning he is now one of the shining lights of both our civilisation and our little family."_

_Chang directed the driver to take them to the school. "Now, Yuy informed me that he left the story with the monk taking the token from the old man on his journey to the kingdom of dreams in search of the fox."_

The monk found his futon after a long wait of sleeplessness in which he filled the inactivity with cleaning. He laid the fox down in the hollow between his head and shoulder and clutching the notched coin in his hand he began to sleep.

He found himself floating in a great blackness and now and then was a shining white snowfly. They swirled and converged in great swarms that was like the river of stars where the gods lived, and he let the snow flies curl around him and ask him questions to which the answers were always the same, the image of the fox's human face as he slept, or the bow of his lips, swollen from where he was kissed. He remembered kissing the fox and lying with him, rubbing and touching in a way that he had sworn to Buddha against. But the fox was sleeping, trapped in this place amongst the dreams.

The snowflies drank down his love like ambrosia, they swallowed his passion until they were fat and lazy and they formed a great bridge across the blackness that he could step across, and at the last, a small snowfly, smaller than the others touched his lips with it's soft wings and the world changed.

He found himself upon a great plain of ice and crystal and glass. He wore a white haori that fitted tight about his frame and came down to his thighs. He wore a slip of sleeveless green fabric that had no obvious fastening and his fundoshi were black and skintight. He wore thick wool tabi and his sandals were heavy yellow leather with steel toes and thick soles.

The snowfly hovered above him, slightly ahead and he followed it.

He walked until he was so warm on the field of crystal and ice and glass that he removed the white haori and left it where it lay. The sun beat down on him like a drum.

He walked on the field of snow and crystal and glass until the thick soles of the sandals were worn away.

He walked on the field of glass and crystal and ice until the tabi were mere fragments of knitted wool about his ankles.

He walked on the field of crystal and glass and ice until his feet bled and he left red footprints behind him, but still he followed the little snowfly.

He followed the little snowfly through a great valley where he was surrounded by the empty bones of long dead beasts as big as palaces.

He followed the little snowfly into a swamp where the gnats were as thick as paper and he had to wipe them from his face and eyes.

He followed the snowfly into a corridor of metal with klaxons and running men in black uniforms.

He followed the snowfly to a great grassy hill where the sun shone warmly, there was a girl on the hill with her puppy, she wore a straw hat to shield her hair from the sun, and the puppy was jumping and frolicking about her. When she saw the monk she smiled. "Are you lost?" She asked.

He knew then the answer that he had to give her. "I have always been lost." He told her.

She smiled and offered him a single yellow flower that she had taken from the field. "You could stay here," she said, "with me, and then you wouldn't be lost anymore, would you? You'd know where you are, with me."

But the golden coin with the notch shone brighter than the sun and the snowfly, for a moment, looked like the fox in it's light.

"I cannot stay here," the monk said, "I have a mission."

"Well good luck," the girl said and slipped the flower into the blousy piece of green fabric that he wore.

The monk continued on his path following the snowfly.

He came to a great house where two metal men were playing cards. One was white and one was black. "Excuse me," he asked, "is this the path to the Palace of the Mikado of All Night's Dreaming?"

The metal men laughed but the white one spoke eventually, "all paths lead to him, eventually. Why do you search for him?"

The monk pulled out the gold coin with the notch, and to his surprise saw that it was covered in writing that he had not seen before, which described one who shapes and creates, the master of stories, "I search for him because he alone can help my friend who is trapped in dreams."

The black man looked sad but he answered. "People become trapped in dreams only because they want to be, are you sure your friend wants to be rescued?"

The monk stopped then and thought of the fox, and how alive he was and how beautiful, he asked himself if he sought to rescue the fox because he himself wanted his company, but the forest was quieter without the fox and the monk would not be missed at all. "I would give my life f or him." The monk said honestly.

The white metal man laid down his cards and pointed with a giant metal fist, "that way," he said, "leads to the House of the King of Dreams. Do not step off the path, for in that way lies madness. That is the danger in dreaming."

The monk thanked them and abandoning the snowfly he followed the path that they had shown him.

He walked for what he knew to be an eternity before he came upon a great palace that was at once a small house and a cave in a hill. He saw great pagodas, gazebos, a run down garden and a fire-pit all at the same time with the terrible clarity of dreams, and he knew that this was the palace of the king of dreams.

To his left there was a clay gong with a ringer hanging to its side, he struck the gong which was soundless.

A great warrior with his hair obscuring his face approached him. "Begone dreamer, only madness and death lie this way."

The monk saw the great warrior with his sword, which could easily cut the monk in twain, and said "I seek the King of All Night's Dreaming."

"He has no time for dreamers or for fools, be-gone." The knight said and raised his sword.

The monk showed him the golden coin with the notch and the monk laid down his sword. "I thought that you were a dreamer who had found his way here by mistake. You may pass." He threw open the door which was at once heavy metal, latched bamboo and cured animal skins.

Inside a boy in silk awaited him. He had eyes like a desert pool and hair like liquid sunshine. He was smiling. "Come in, come in." The boy said, "he will await you in his chamber and I am to lead the way."

He followed the boy through long corridors, past nightmares and dreams, beautiful maidens and great feasts, monsters and dark shadows until they came to a great hall where the end was split by a great circular window.

"I can go no further," the boy said, "you may wait for him there."

But when the monk turned to thank the boy he was gone.

The monk entered the great hall with its black and white floor. At the end, under the great circular window was a throne of finest jade and sat beside it was a golden cage in which a canary lived.

"Come to see the Dream king then?" The Canary asked in his deep voice, and he was at once a golden fox and a man with hair the colour of spring wine. He wore a grey coat, a great fur and a red jacket all at the same time as his golden feathers. "Do you think he'll listen to your plea?"

"I can but ask." The monk said, and knelt there to wait for the king of dreams.

It was both an eternity and an instant in the way dreams can be before a shadow formed upon the throne of finest jade and a man with reddish brown hair sat there with a great ruby in his hands. Like the canary he was also a great eagle, a fox, a lion and a million other things and the monk was awed for he knew that this was the King of Dreams and in all his imaginings he had not seen even the beginning of this man.

"Majesty," the monk said, bowing low with his forehead pressed to the floor, "I am but a poor monk with nothing to my name but my begging bowl, but I was blessed with the friendship of a young fox and now that fox is trapped in dreams and I would save him."

"Why?" the king of dreams asked. "You are a young man with your entire life before you, why come here, why risk my displeasure for a fox?"

The monk was quiet and then remembered what he had told the old man on the path. " Because I love him, because I was alone and he showed me what it meant to have a friend who loved me for being me."

"The fox may not care to be rescued." The king of dreams said, "you know nothing but still you came here."

"Would it save my friend I would storm the thousand hells." The monk said and it was no boast.

"And if I told you that the fox had taken your dream, that the dream that trapped him was his to refuse because he took it in your place because if he had not then you would be the one trapped here in the dreaming."

The monk thought about it for a while. "If it was my destiny that I be trapped here then I would take his place because the forest lacks his presence and the days are darker without him, but I am a simple mountain monk and no one would mourn my passing."

The king of dreams frowned and then reached into the pocket of his robe. "He was with you when you dreamed the first dream, the dream of this box," he held out a small lacquered box, "and he was with you when you dreamt the second dream, the dream of this key," he held it aloft, "but he took the third dream from you, would you now dream it?"

The monk thought of the fox, asleep in the little temple on the side of the mountain apart from the lands of man, and he nodded.

The king of dreams opened the box with the key.

Inside the box was a room and the fox stepped into it, it was lush with great fabrics festooned from roof to floor and thick cushions and lamps, but in the centre, the focal piece was a great mirror and pinned to the back of it was a piece of silk upon which there was a ruined painting of a monk that appeared to have been soaked in water, but a perfect picture of an onmyoji in a great black hat. The monk turned the mirror and stared into it.

Inside the mirror was the fox; he lay upon a great cushion in robes of silk with a crown of gold upon his hair of burnished oak.

He stepped into the glass, and it rippled about him like water.

"Why have you come here?" the fox asked. "I am here for you."

"Because this was my dream." The monk said, "and you sleep in my little temple because you have taken this for me, and more than anything I would have you live."

"It was my choice," the fox said, standing and cupping his hands around the cheeks of the monk, their faces so close that they almost kissed, "to give my life for you. I am just a fox with nothing to my credit other than my love for you." The monk knew that he cried but he said nothing as he pressed his forehead against the fox's. "I went among the baku and dreamt your dreams with you until this last one that I dreamt in your stead knowing that it would be my death. I heard the oni that the onmyoji sent to lay the curse upon you and could not tell you lest my heart explode in my chest. Go back," the fox said, "this is all I have to give you."

"But it is my death," the monk said, "and it is my dream that you took as your own. And I would take it back, your life is more precious to me than mine own." And then he kissed the fox softly upon the lips as his fingers reached up and pulled down the crown, "I would give you the world, but I cannot, but live, live for me, live with me in your heart, but promise me one thing."

The fox's eyes were full of tears as he nodded.

"Do not avenge me, enough people have died in my name." And with no choice the fox nodded.

The Mikado of all night's dreaming turned to his canary, who was sometimes a man and sometimes a great wolf, and smiled, "we shall leave them alone now," he said.

The canary, who was sometimes a man and sometimes a great wolf, just smiled back.

"_Is that how the story ends?" The boy asked Chang where he sat in the cushioned chair by the window. The day was slipping from the sky into nightfall._

"_No," Chang replied, "not quite, but it is late and Maxwell has asked that he finish the tale of the Fox, the Monk and the Mikado of All Night's dreaming and I owe him more than that. Now shall we talk a walk to the refectory and find something to eat."_


	9. Chapter 9

_The boy sits at the breakfast table. He had found the school's beds comfortable and didn't mind that he was expected to share. The other bed was empty but he likes the idea that he won't always have to be alone. The Lady Relena had hobbled down to join them for supper last night and although her ankle had broken and she was on a stick she was full of rare humour with her man-servants flittering about her like determined butterflies._

"_You're Stephen." The man says sitting next to him, he has a sunny expression and eyes the colour of twilight, and the boy knows with the same certainty that Relena had based the monk on Yuy that this is the fox, or he had been the fox before many years separated the boy of the story with this man. His hair is greying in places and he has comfortable creases at the corner of his eyes and mouth from a life happily lived. "I'm Duo," he says offering his hand to shake, "I'm sorry I've been just too busy to meet you before this, but give a boy a job and he wants to do it to the best of his ability. I manage the War Museum in town," he says with a grin, "wanna come see?"_

_The War museum is an imposing old building with an austere concrete front. He knew it well because it is open late and always warm so he had often found shelter against the weather there. It is different, he thinks to himself, wandering around it with someone who knows more than the plaques tell. "That's a Leo," he says pointing out the gigantic metal man, "there were lots of types of them, all named for the zodiac, we've just got a Cancer, but we're yet to get a Pisces." Maxwell's eyes twinkle with mischief. He points to a picture, "And that was General Treize Kushrenada," the boy recognises him from the story as the Mikado of All Night's Dreaming. "And that," Maxwell says stepping over the canvas rope up to a much smaller picture that he lifts down from the wall, "is the five of us, and Lena, when we were your age."_

_The museum abuts a small café that smells of freshly cooked bacon, "I suppose you want to know how the story ends." Maxwell says putting down two tall glasses of frothy pink milk, "When Lena told it to me, well she told it to Ro when he was in hospital I just happened to be there, god it was a long time ago, I was still convinced that they were going to marry, I thought I'd go out of my head wanting to know what happened to the fox and what he did."_

"_But the monk told him not to seek revenge." The boy protests._

_Maxwell's grin is cold and manipulative. "Ah, but foxes," he says, "are cunning and quick." _

The Mikado of all Night's dreaming left them alone for what might have been an hour or an eternity. Perhaps in that time the fox and the monk simply talked, perhaps they made love or perhaps they just sat in the mirror and stared at each other, looking for the words to say. The Mikado of All Night's dreaming left them their privacy and so must we.

Eventually the fox reached out and took from the monk the token which the old man on the path had given him and the Mikado of All Night's Dreaming returned and he looked at them. "It is time," he said.

"Can you free him?" asked the fox.

"I cannot, if you could break the metal of this mirror then you could, but I cannot intrude upon the dreams of men or foxes, even when the dream is unjust." And the Mikado of All Night's Dreaming looked like he might be sad but his face was mercurial and it was hard to tell.

"Take him back outside the land of dreams," the monk said, "that is my decision."

"It's not fair," protested the fox.

"No, it is not" the Mikado said, "but it is his decision, this is his dream that you stole from him, and it is his life that is his to choose."

"I would have you live." The Monk said, "I am a simple man with simple hopes and dreams and love, and you, you are a fox and you are beautiful and cunning and quick. I only ask that when I am gone you seek happiness and not revenge for revenge is an empty path."

The fox wept but the Mikado had his hand on his shoulder pulling him away from where he would have clung. "Can I not stay also? Why must it be only one of us who remains trapped in dreams?"

"Because it is his choice." The Mikado said calmly, "come, your body awaits you in a small temple on the side of a mountain where men never go." As he was led away the canary that was sometimes a wolf and sometimes a man wrapped his arms about the fox and held him tight for long moments but he said nothing.

"Will you do as he asked?" The Mikado asked looking into the fox's twilight eyes.

"Yes," said the fox, "I will seek happiness, for that is what he wanted, but first," and when the fox smiled he showed his sharp white teeth, "I will seek revenge."

The Fox awoke in the small temple of the side of the mountain where men do not go, curled in his fox form in the wild brown hair of the monk, and he sat with him, and he told him all the stories he had ever learned, and all the songs he had ever sung, and on the third day when the monk finally died the fox died inside with him.

In the city of Kyoto, in a house not far outside the emperor's compound an Onmyoji watched the moon wax and wane and found that he did not die. He felt the death of his fear and knew that his spell to kill the monk in the temple on the side of the mountain where men never went had been successful and he amused himself with his teenage concubine whose flesh was as sweet as peaches.

One night when there was a terrible storm and it seemed that the gods warred across the sky and lightning ripped through the clouds a young man knocked on the door to the fifth finest house in Kyoto. The boy was bedraggled and his fine clothes ruined by the weather and the Onmyoji's wife, recognising his obvious nobility invited him in.

They bathed him in the finest oils and layered the finest incenses about him, they gave him robes of the finest silk and the Onmyoji's wife and concubine clucked together to see how lovely he was, how his hair was the colour of burnished oak and his eyes, which were heavy lashed as if by some great sorrow, were the colour of twilight.

When the Onmyoji saw the boy he was overcome with lust, he dreamt at night of the boy's soft limbs and rounded joints, of the curve of his neck and the black line of his lashes against his peach cheek.

The boy stayed in the fifth finest house in Kyoto for two days before he moved into his own house, which was on the other side of the area in which the Onmyoji lived. The Onmyoji was driven mad with lust for the boy, for the line of his back and the soft strength of his hands where he folded them in his lap. So he sent word to the boy that he would like to visit and the boy sent word that he accepted the invitation and he was welcome to call two days from now.

Those two nights the Onmyoji could not sleep nor eat nor find pleasure in either his beautiful wife or his teenage concubine.

He visited his three witches in their small house to see if his suit would be favourably received and when he asked them the youngest of them with her white blonde hair and pale blue eyes, the one who frightened him most because he thought she might be dead, laughed and laughed. "The one he loved," said the eldest with her corn brown hair, "he is dead, there are none who will stand in your way." And the youngest with her dead fish skin and cruel lips laughed and laughed and laughed.

When the time came to go to the house of the boy he was beside himself with nerves and wrung his hands and tugged on his beard as he pulled up to the great house, which it seemed might be finer than his own. "How fine your house," said the Onmyoji to the boy.

The boy smiled his secretive smile, "but if you were not here," he said, "then perhaps this house would be empty and ruined, just beams open to the sky."

Although he did not understand the joke the Onmyoji laughed.

He sat down to a great feast with sake and beer and fish and meat on dishes of fine porcelain and pewter. "Such fine food," the onmyoji told the boy, "you spoil me."

"Ah," said the boy, "but if you were not here perhaps we would be dining upon mice and spiders and the slime that grows on the walls." And then he laughed and the Onmyoji laughed with him though again he did not quite get the joke.

When the time came for the Onmyoji to leave he made his intentions clear that he wished to stay the night and enjoy the boy's favours. "Ah," said the boy, "but the man I loved is dead and I would not share my love with another unless," he paused because the Onmyoji was hanging on his every word, "I knew that I alone was prime in their heart."

"But you are." The onmyoji said as the boy turned to reveal a dusky pink nipple on skin the colour of sweetened cream and the Onmyoji was nearly insane with lust.

"But once you have had my favours you would return to your fine house," said the boy.

"I would not." Protested the onmyoji.

"And you would dream of your beautiful wife and your teenage courtesan when you had left my futon," said the boy.

"I would not," protested the onmyoji.

"Then you would find me fickle and with your great magics you would send oni to torment me or turn me into a bird that you would keep in a cage."

"I would not," protested the onmyoji.

"Come back to me," said the boy, "when you would love only me, and I will give you my body, and my heart and my soul, for I promised I would seek happiness."

That night there were two great fires in the city of Kyoto, one was the fifth finest house, the house of a great and powerful Onmyoji, which destroyed his wealth and killed his beautiful wife and teenaged concubine. The second was in a small house that belonged to three witches on the outskirts of the city. Their bodies were not found there, just those of small children with their skulls smashed in.

The next day the Onmyoji appeared before the house of the boy with hair like burnished oak and eyes like twilight and drew behind him a great cart full of magic scrolls and talismans. "I have burnt down my house," he said, "that I could not return, and I have killed my beautiful wife and my teenaged courtesan that I would not dream of them when I am with you, and I have brought you all my magics that I could not send Oni to torment you, now, will you love me and only me."

"Come to me," said the boy, unbinding long oak coloured hair, "and remove your robe and your jewels and your hat so that I am all that you have." And driven on by lust and madness the onmyoji did so standing before the boy with eyes the colour of twilight naked as the day he was born.

The boy took two steps to him and reached up as if to kiss him on the eye, "he wouldn't have wanted me to kill you." The Boy said and took his revenge for the teeth of foxes are quick and sharp.

Then with a flick of his tail he was gone.

The onmyoji was found days later in the ruins of a house which had burned down many years before, he was naked and one of his eyes had been plucked out and he dined upon the meat of mice and of spiders. They said he had been driven mad by the loss of his house and his wealth but there were others that said that he had fooled around with foxes and was taught the error of his ways.

"_And that," Maxwell says with a grin, "is how the story ends," he looks mischievous as he stares into his milkshake, the third he has had since they came here._

"_No," says the boy angrily, "it's not, the monk and the fox were supposed to be together."_

"_and who says that they weren't." Maxwell answers, "there is a terrible gap between a man and a fox, and surely the Mikado of All Night's Dreaming who had taken pity on them would see them together in the dreaming."_

"_but the fox wanted to be happy, he couldn't be happy without the monk."_

_Maxwell smiles and looks at the ring on his finger, "and in some corner of the dreaming, away from the prying of men there is a man who is sometimes a monk and sometimes a fox, and a kit who is sometimes a fox and sometimes a man, and they made a pact that they would be together forever." He wipes his mouth with the napkin and throws it on the table with some money. "It is a happy ending, because without the Onmyoji the fox and the monk would never have met and he was punished for what he did."_

"_But," the boy protests._

"_They are together," Maxwell grins, looking at his ring again, "and they thwarted the onmyoji and perhaps the fox spent an eternity to find a way to free his lost love, by having none of those endings," he is twisting the ring on his finger, "we all have all of them. They're together," he says, "somewhere. Now come on, I'll walk you around the museum, it's not everyday one gets escorted by the head of operations and the former pilot of Deathscythe."_


End file.
